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Meditation Increases Compassionate Response to Suffering

August 2013
Psychological Science 24(10)

DOI:10.1177/0956797613485603

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PubMed

Authors:

Paul Condon

Northeastern University

Gaelle Desbordes

David desteno

Northeastern University

.# Observed and Expected Frequencies of Helping Behavior Across Conditions

…

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DOI: 10.1177/0956797613485603

2013 24: 2125 originally published online 21 August 2013Psychological Science

Paul Condon, Gaëlle Desbordes, Willa B. Miller and David DeSteno

Meditation Increases Compassionate Responses to Suffering

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Short Report

Contemplative science has documented a plethora of

intrapersonal benefits stemming from meditation, includ-

ing increases in gray matter density (Hölzel, Carmody,

et al., 2011), positive affect (Moyer et al., 2011), and

improvement in various mental-health outcomes (Hölzel,

Lazar, et al., 2011). Strikingly, however, much less is

known about the interpersonal impact of meditation.

Although Buddhist teachings suggest that increases in

compassionate responding should be a primary outcome

of meditation (Davidson & Harrington, 2002), little scien-

tific evidence supports this conjecture. Even as scientists

have begun to examine the effects of meditation on pro-

social action, the conclusions that can be drawn with

respect to compassion have been limited by designs that

lack real-time person-to-person interactions centered on

suffering. Previous work, for example, has utilized medi-

tators’ self-reported intentions and motivations to behave

in supportive manners toward other individuals (e.g.,

Fredrickson, Cohn, Coffey, Pek, & Finkel, 2008) and com-

puter-based economic games requiring cooperation (e.g.,

Leiberg, Klimecki, & Singer, 2011; Weng et al., 2013) to

assess altruistic action. Such methods have suggested that

meditation may increase generalized prosocial respond-

ing, but have not clearly and objectively gauged responses

meant solely to mitigate the suffering of other individuals.

To address this gap, we utilized a design in which

individuals were confronted with a person in pain in an

ecologically valid setting. If, as suggested by Buddhist

theorizing, meditation enhances compassionate respond-

ing, participants who have completed a brief meditation

course should act to relieve such a person’s suffering

more frequently than those who have not completed the

course.

Method

The final set of participants comprised 39 individuals (29

female, 10 male; mean age = 25.23 years, SD = 4.66)

recruited from the Greater Boston community for an

8-week study on meditation. (See the Supplemental

Material available online for recruitment procedures.)

Individuals were randomly assigned either to complete

meditation classes or to be in a waiting-list control group.

Those assigned to the meditation condition were further

randomly subdivided to receive one of two protocols:

mindfulness or compassion meditation. We utilized two

separate meditation protocols both to enhance generaliz-

ability and to ensure that any resulting effects of medita-

tion on behavior could not be attributed to demand

characteristics. Although techniques to focus and calm

the mind were taught in both protocols, direct discussion

of compassion and the suffering of other people occurred

only in compassion meditation. (See the Supplemental

Material for meditation protocols.)

Meditation classes were held in a nondenominational

venue dedicated to spiritual activities (e.g., prayer, medi-

tation, yoga). A Tibetan Buddhist lama (author W. M.)

with 20-plus years of meditation experience conducted

both courses. The classes were taught in a secular format

featuring 60 min of instruction, 30 min of practice, and

30 min for discussion; classes were held once a week for

8 weeks. Participants also received 20-min audio-guided

meditations to complete independently outside of class.

Participants reported their daily use of the audio record-

ings each week. Participants received $60 for their

participation.

Following 8 weeks of meditation practice or approxi-

mately 8 weeks after initial recruitment to the waiting list,

485603PSS

XXX10.1177/0956797613485603Condon et al.Meditation and Compassionate Behavior

research-article2013

Corresponding Authors:

Paul Condon, Department of Psychology, 360 Huntington Ave.,

Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115

E-mail: p.condon@neu.edu

David DeSteno, Department of Psychology, 360 Huntington Ave.,

Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115

E-mail: d.desteno@gmail.com

Meditation Increases Compassionate

Responses to Suffering

Paul Condon

, Gaëlle Desbordes

, Willa B. Miller

and David DeSteno

Department of Psychology, Northeastern University;

Athinoula A. Martinos Center for

Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School;

and

Department of Religion, Harvard University

Received 1/3/13; Revision accepted 3/17/13

2126 Condon et al.

participants were scheduled to come to the lab under the

guise of completing tests of cognitive ability. To obtain a

naturalistic measure of responses to suffering, we utilized

confederates to construct a test situation outside the labo-

ratory. All confederates were blind both to the hypothesis

being tested and to each participant’s experimental condi-

tion. Prior to a participant’s arrival, two female confeder-

ates sat in a designated waiting area possessing three

chairs. Upon arriving at the waiting area, the participant

sat in the remaining chair. After the participant had been

sitting for 1 min, a third female confederate, who played

the role of the “sufferer,” appeared around the corner with

crutches and a walking boot. The sufferer, who visibly

winced while walking, stopped just as she arrived at the

chairs. She then looked at her cell phone, audibly sighed

in discomfort, and leaned back against a wall.

To assess compassionate responding, we measured

whether the true participant offered his or her seat to the

sufferer to relieve her pain. Via text message, one of the

sitting confederates surreptitiously notified the experi-

menter, who was waiting out of sight, whether and when

the participant offered the seat to the sufferer. If 2 min

passed and the participant had not given up his or her

seat, the trial was ended and coded as a nonhelping

response. The experimenter then entered the waiting

area, greeted the participant, and escorted him or her to

the lab to complete a series of measures unrelated to the

goals of the present analysis.

Results and Discussion

As predicted, meditation directly enhanced compassion-

ate responding. Meditators offered their seats to the suf-

ferer more frequently than did nonmeditators from

the waiting-list control group, !

(1, N = 39) = 5.13, p =

.02, " = .36 (see Table 1). This enhanced prosocial

responding did not differ as a function of meditation pro-

tocol; participants practicing mindfulness meditation

were as likely to aid the sufferer as were those practicing

compassion meditation (see the Supplemental Material

for analysis).

That 8 weeks of meditation resulted in

such a large effect—increasing the odds of acting to

relieve another person’s pain by more than 5 times (odds

ratio = 5.33)—is all the more striking given that the help-

ing occurred in a social context whose features should

attenuate such behavior. The simple presence of the two

confederates and their total disregard for the pain of the

sufferer constitutes a classic bystander manipulation in

which both diffusion of responsibility and norms sug-

gesting an acceptance of nonintervention are heightened

(cf. Darley & Latané, 1968).

Additional work will be needed to isolate the specific

causal mechanism for the observed effect more narrowly,

as several meditation-induced mediators (e.g., height-

ened awareness, increased perspective taking) stand as

possible candidates (cf. Hölzel, Lazar, et al., 2011).

Nonetheless, this study is the first to clearly show the

power of meditation to increase compassionate respond-

ing to suffering, even in the face of social pressures to

avoid so doing. In turn, it provides scientific credence to

ancient Buddhist teachings that meditation increases

spontaneous compassionate behavior.

Author Contributions

P. Condon, D. DeSteno, G. Desbordes, and W. B. Miller

designed the experiments. P. Condon and W. B. Miller con-

ducted the research. P. Condon and D. DeSteno conducted the

analyses and wrote the manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with

respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.

Funding

We acknowledge support from a Mind and Life Institute

Francisco J. Varela award. Any views, findings, conclusions, or

recommendations expressed in this publication do not neces-

sarily reflect those of the Mind and Life Institute.

Supplemental Material

Additional supporting information may be found at http://pss

.sagepub.com/content/by/supplemental-data

Notes

1. Participants in the meditation condition earned an additional

$20 and entry into a $100 raffle for completing weekly logs.

2. Additional analyses revealed that gender did not affect rates

of helping behavior. Also of import, analyses of self-reported

social networks demonstrated that social-network size neither

increased as a result of participation in the meditation classes

nor significantly differed between the meditation and control

groups, suggesting that increases in social capital from par-

ticipating in a group activity could not account for the central

finding that meditation increased compassionate respond-

ing (see the Supplemental Material for these and additional

results).

Table 1.# Observed and Expected Frequencies of Helping

Behavior Across Conditions

Meditation training Waiting-list control

Outcome Observed Expected Observed Expected

No help 10 13.3 16 12.7

Help 10 6.7 3 6.3

Meditation and Compassionate Behavior 2127

References

Darley, J. M., & Latané, B. (1968). Bystander intervention

in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology, 8, 377–383.

Davidson, R. J., & Harrington, A. (2002). Visions of compassion:

Western scientists and Tibetan Buddhists examine human

nature. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Fredrickson, B. L., Cohn, M. A., Coffey, K. A., Pek, J., & Finkel,

S. M. (2008). Open hearts build lives: Positive emotions,

induced through loving-kindness meditation, build con-

sequential personal resources. Journal of Personality and

Social Psychology, 95, 1045–1062.

Hölzel, B. K., Carmody, J., Vangel, M., Congleton, C., Yerramsetti,

S. M., Gard, T., & Lazar, S. W. (2011). Mindfulness practice

leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density.

Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 191, 36–43.

Hölzel, B. K., Lazar, S. W., Gard, T., Schuman-Olivier, Z.,

Vago, D. R., & Ott, U. (2011). How does mindfulness

meditation work? Proposing mechanisms of action from a

conceptual and neural perspective. Perspectives on Psycho-

logical Science, 6, 537–559.

Leiberg, S., Klimecki, O., & Singer, T. (2011). Short-

term compassion training increases prosocial behav-

ior in a newly developed prosocial game. PLoS ONE, 6,

e17798. Retrieved from http://www.plosone.org/article/

info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0017798

Moyer, C. A., Donnelly, M. P. W., Anderson, J. C., Valek, K.

C., Huckaby, S. J., Widerholt, D. A., . . . Rice, B. L. (2011).

Frontal electroencephalographic asymmetry associated

with positive emotion is produced by very brief meditation

training. Psychological Science, 22, 1277–1279.

Weng, H. Y., Fox, A. S., Shackman, A. J., Stodola, D. E.,

Caldwell, J. Z. K., Olson, M. C., . . . Davidson, R. J.

(2013). Compassion training alters altruism and neural

responses to suffering. Psychological Science, 24, 1171–

1180.

!!!!!Meditation and Compassionate Behavior

Supplementary Online Material (word count: 977)

Participants

During recruitment, all participants self-

reported little to no experience with any type of

meditation experience and none reported completing

any previous meditation course or meditation retreat.

All participants passed a telephone-administered

version of the Mini-Mental State Examination as

indicated by a score greater than or equal to 21

(Newkirk et al., 2004).

Sixty-seven individuals were initially

recruited for the study. Twenty-six dropped out prior

to completion of the training portion. Two others

were removed by experimenters: one who did not

take a chair in the waiting area upon arrival and one

who expressed suspicion about the study. The final

sample consisted of 39 individuals (20 meditators,

and 19 waitlist controls).

Supplementary Analyses

Amount of Training

On average, meditating participants attended

6.60 (SD=0.50) instruction sessions and reported

completing independent 20-minute intervals of

meditation 3.74 (SD=1.04) times per week.

Helping Behavior by Meditation Class

Those participants who completed the

mindfulness- and compassion-based meditation did

not differ in frequency of helping behavior,

(1)=0.20, p>.65 (see Table S1).

Gender

Gender differences in helping behavior have

been reported in numerous studies, although the

direction of these differences vary depending on

context. Males help more frequently in some contexts

(e.g., short-term encounters), but females help more

in others (e.g., long-term close relationships; for a

review, see Eagly & Crowley, 1986). In the current

study, we found that participant gender did not affect

frequency of compassionate responding, f

females

=10

out of 29, f

males

=3 out of 10, !

(1,N=39)=0.07, p>.79.

Furthermore, the composition of male and female

participants in the meditation and control groups did

not differ, !

(1)=0.41.

Design Limitations: Control Group and Social

Network Analysis

The nature of our design required that one

group (i.e., meditators) came together for repeated

classes, thereby creating a context that afforded

interaction with other individuals participating in the

study. The waitlist group had no such possibility of

interacting with others due to participation in a

structured class. Thus, although the control group

was matched with respect to interest in meditation

and desire to enroll in an 8-week course, its members

did not engage in repeated interactions with

meditation class members or an instructor. One

resulting concern is that repeated interactions with

fellow participants in the course may have produced

social consequences that could account for increased

levels of helping behavior (e.g., increased social

resources). To rule out this possibility, we obtained a

measure of the number of people that participants

interacted with on a regular basis before and after

training. At pre- and post-testing (i.e., eight weeks

apart), participants received an email with a link to an

online version of the Social Network Index (Cohen,

Doyle, Skoner, Rabin, & Gwaltney, 1997). This

survey asked participants to list the initials of every

individual that they “interacted with in person or over

the phone at least once every two weeks.” The survey

prompted participants to list people in the following

categories: romantic partner, parents, partner’s

parents, children, relatives, friends, classmates, co-

workers, acquaintances, members of a spiritual

group, members of a volunteer group, and members

of unspecified groups. Participants could list up to

seven individuals for each category, with the

exception of friends and members of unspecified

group (up to ten individuals). Our primary interest

concerned the total number of people with whom

participants reported interacting. If the meditation

classes increased social capital, we would expect to

find that those in the meditation group reported an

increase in their number of relationships at post-

testing, relative to the wait-list group.

A 2 (time: pre, post) X 2 (group: meditators,

wait-list) repeated measures ANOVA, with time as

the repeated factor, revealed no main effect of group

on social capital (M

meditators

=11.58; SD

meditators

=4.53;

wait-list

=12.35 SD

wait-list

=5.07), F(1,31)=0.21, p>.65,

and no effect of time (M

pre-test

=12.18; SD

pre-test

=5.60;

post-test

=11.58 SD

post-test

=5.10), F(1,31)=0.83, p>.37.

There was no interaction, F(1,31)=1.40, p>.24 (note

that only 13 participants from the WL control group

provided responses to the SNI). In sum, participants

!!!!!Meditation and Compassionate Behavior

in the meditation group did not experience a growth

in their social network as a function of participating

in an organized class. Thus, the experience of

participating in a group activity is unlikely to account

for our central finding, at least as stemming from

increases in social capital.

It could also be argued, however, that

exposure to a caring or charismatic instructor might

have exerted an influence, principally through

modeling. That is, meditation in and of itself

covaried with exposure to an instructor in our design.

Although certainly possible, we believe that such a

factor is unlikely to account for our findings in the

present case. If it were the influence of exposure to a

caring instructor, we would expect to find a greater

effect of meditation on prosocial behavior among

participants following the compassion meditation

protocol, where actual discussion of the virtue of

relieving the suffering of others was discussed by the

instructor. In the mindfulness meditation condition,

no such discussions occurred; all instruction centered

on techniques involved in centering attention (e.g.,

breathing), and consequently provided no opportunity

for prosocial behavior to be modeled on or directly

influenced by the instructor’s explicit or implicit

goals. Nonetheless, having established the basic

phenomenon, we believe it fruitful for future

investigation to aim toward disambiguating the exact

mechanisms associated with contemplative training

that may underlie its enhancement of prosocial

behavior, as well as individual susceptibility to such

enhancement.

References for Supplementary Material

Cohen, S., Doyle, W.J., Skoner, D.P., Rabin, B.S., Gwaltney, J.M. (1997). Social ties and

susceptibility to the common cold. Journal of the American Medical Association, 277,

1940-1944.

Eagly, A.H., & Crowley, M. (1986). Gender and helping behavior: A meta-analytic review of the

social psychological literature. Psychological Bulletin, 100, 283-308.

Newkirk, L.A., Kim, J.M., Thompson, J.M., Tinklenberg, J.R., Yesavage, J.A., & Taylor, J.L.

(2004). Validation of a 26-point telephone version of the Mini-Mental State Examination.

Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology, 17, 81-87.

Acknowledgement

We thank Kevin Bickart for assistance with the social network analysis.

!!!!!Meditation and Compassionate Behavior

Supplementary Table 1.

Observed and expected frequencies of helping behavior by meditation group.

Mindfulness-group

Compassion-group

Outcome

Observed

Expected

Observed

Expected

No help

4.5

5.5

Help

4.5

5.5

Note. !

(1)=0.20, p>.65! !

!!!!!Meditation and Compassionate Behavior

Supplementary Table 2A.

Mindfulness-based training protocol.

Week

Training components

Open awareness meditation

Introduction of basic techniques (e.g., body-scan) for relaxing the body and monitoring the mind’s natural tendency to

wander from the object of attention (i.e., the body).

Mindfulness of a physical object

Introduction and elaboration of practices for learning to calm the conceptually discursive mind for the purpose of attenuating

involuntary thoughts. Stability of attention (i.e., on a physical object) is practiced with the goal of sustaining attention in a

purposeful, non-judgmental manner for an extended period.

Mindfulness of the breathing with relaxation (I)

Continuing practice of techniques designed to instill a deepening sense of physical and mental relaxation, stillness, and

vigilance. When successful, involuntary thoughts subside and vividness of attention gradually increases. This gives rise to an

overall sense of greater presence, calm, and equilibrium.

Mindfulness of the breathing with relaxation (II)

Continuing practice from Week 3. Additional instruction focused on common impediments to meditation practice, including

sleepiness, agitation, and boredom.

Settling the mind in its natural state (i. e., mindfulness of mental events) (I)

Introduction of practices for further refining the meditator’s metacognitive abilities, with the goal of attenuating the

immediate and habitual absorption in one’s thoughts that characterize most mental functioning. When successful, insight

into the nature of the mind and its activities is achieved.

Settling the mind in its natural state (II)

Continued practice with the goal of developing increased relaxation, stillness of awareness in the midst of mental activities,

and vividness, together with heightened metacognitive abilities to observe mental states and processes without identifying

with them.

Awareness of awareness (I)

In this final technique, relaxation, stillness, and vividness of attention continue to be enhanced, leading to a perception of the

process of becoming aware, as opposed to only perceiving the contents of awareness.

Mindfulness of awareness and thoughts

Participants use the techniques they’ve learned from all previous weeks and apply them to concentration on the quality of

immediate mental experience. Instead of using breath or body as an object, now mind itself becomes the meditation object.

Particular attention will be paid to working with the arising and disappearing of thoughts.

!!!!!Meditation and Compassionate Behavior

Supplementary Table 2B.

Compassion-based training protocol.

Week

Training components

Developing attention and stability of mind

Introduction of basic meditation techniques for focusing attention for increasingly longer periods of time. These techniques

are included in the practice of all subsequent compassion meditation components.

Baring witness to ones current life-stressors and difficulties

Introduction of practice for noticing and reflecting on current life challenges, such as a difficult situation, event, or person.

Participants learn to accept themselves in these moments and relax resistance to discomfort to remain and experience these

states without judgment or a need to remedy it. When successful, this practice leads to the dissolution of discomfort.

Commune with other’s life-stressors and difficulties

Introduction of techniques to develop awareness of the commonality of one’s own suffering. Participants learn to recognize

that all others feel discomfort just as they do. Participants imagine themselves in a community of others experiencing the

same discomfort.

Extending compassion outward

Building on previous practice of bearing witness and communing with suffering, participants visualize breathing own and

others suffering into the heart (inhalation) and dissolving all difficulties outward into a spacious sky (exhalation).

Release of suffering

Introduction of practice for letting go of one’s own and others’ suffering into a state of open awareness.

Exchange with others – close target

The culmination of previous instruction are specifically applied to a close other (i.e,. a person that one cares about).

Participants visualize the disappearance of another’s suffering as they breath it inward and send compassion outward.

Exchange with others – neutral, unknown target and a difficult, annoying target

Extending practice of exchange with others to neutral and difficult targets.

Exchange with others – all sentient beings

Extending practice of exchange with others to all sentient beings.

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Aug 2023
COGNITIVE THER RES

Purpose Previous compassion scales measured correlates or consequences of compassion, included mindfulness in their definition and do not fully operationalize the affective, cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal skills involved in cultivating compassion. The proposed Compassion Questionnaires towards Self (CQS) and Others (CQO) aim to operationalize compassion towards self and others by grounding them in affective, cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal dimensions with each representing a set of skills that can be cultivated through training and practice. Methods Based on the proposed theoretical approach, the CQS and CQO items were developed through consultations with a panel of eight graduate students and a group of ten experts in the field. A series of three studies were conducted to validate the questionnaires and test their clinical utility. Results Results from the three studies suggested the merging of the affective and cognitive dimensions, yielding three independent dimensions for both the CQS and CQO. These findings were additionally supported by convergent and discriminant evidence. In addition, results suggested that CQS and CQO subscales’ scores are moderately associated with mindfulness measures and are sensitive to mindfulness training or meditation practice and experience. Conclusions. The CQS and CQO are the first questionnaires that operationalize compassion towards self and others as sets of affective, cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal skills/abilities that are independent from mindfulness, and they have important theoretical and practical implications. Limitations as well as theoretical and practical implications of the CQS and CQO are thoroughly discussed.

I N T E R N A T I O N A L L E A D E R S H I P J O U R N A L IN THIS ISSUE ARTICLES A Historical View of Leadership Prototypes: Looking Backward to Move Forward Leadership Models for Higher Education Institutions: An Empirical Investigation Adobi Jessica Timiyo Uncommon Pairs: The Making of Unique Peacebuilding Leaders in Israel and Palestine - A Preliminary Examination Saliba Sarsar Humility and Tone at the Top

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2017

Leadership has captured people's interest from ancient times to the present day. This fascination has driven intergenerational stories of leaders, legends, fables, and leadership lessons. The significance of leadership to ancestral group survival implies that leaders were probably the protagonists of intra-- and intergenerational storytelling within a group. This historiographic essay presents an explanation of prominent leadership prototypes based on Zaccaro's framework (2014) describing four leadership prototypes: teacher, warrior, problem solver, and politician. This work further refines Zaccaro's framework by interfacing and reinterpreting these prototypes through four historical representations as seen through the lens of modern models of leadership. These representations and narratives of leadership prototypes include historical accounts from the Sage Kings of Chinese mythology, Plato's Philosopher King, The Rule of St. Benedict, and Machiavelli's The Prince. The interpretation of leadership experiences from a historic viewpoint can help point to the origin of the self--identities of today's leaders, whether they lead nations or corporations, communities or small organizational groups.

The Mediating Role of Helpfulness in Relationship Between Yoga and Psychological Well-Being

Preprint

Full-text available

Aug 2023

Elvan Kiremitçi-Canıöz

This study aims to positively examine the effect of yoga on psychological well-being and the mediator role of helpfulness on this effect. It is seen that they live with the quest to feel good and apply to yoga as a way to strengthen their mental health, having inreasing psychological well-being, and help people more. Therefore, yoga, psychological well-being, and helpfulness were examined in this study. Participants filled the scales via an online form. This study have participants whose ages are between 18–55. Demographic Information Form, Psychological Well-Being Scale, and Helpfulness Scale were used. The collected datas were analyzed by SPSS 23.0 analysis program. According to the findings, the mean score of helpfulness of who are yoga practitioners are significantly lower than non-yoga practitioners. However the mean score of psychological well-being significantly higher than non-yoga practitioners. There were found significant relationships between yoga, psychological well-being, and helpfulness. When there was examined the mediation analysis, helpfulness had a mediator role on the relationship between yoga, and psychological well-being. In the literature, there was a huge lack about the relationship between yoga, psychological we-being, and helpfulness. Thus, these results will show a new perspective to the researchers for explaining with these variables, mostly helpfulness.

Do contemplative practices make us more moral?

Article

Aug 2023

Contemplative practices are a staple of modern life and have historically been intertwined with morality. However, do these practices in fact improve our morality? The answer remains unclear because the science of contemplative practices has focused on unidimensional aspects of morality, which do not align with the type of interdependent moral functioning these practices aspire to cultivate. Here, we appeal to a multifactor construct, which allows the assessment of outcomes from a contemplative intervention across multiple dimensions of moral cognition and behavior. This offers an open-minded and empirically rigorous investigation into the impact of contemplative practices on moral actions. Using this framework, we gain insight into the effect of mindfulness meditation on morality, which we show does indeed have positive influences, but also some negative influences, distributed across our moral functioning.

Does Mindfulness Practice Affect the Quality of Life of Working Mothers? An Empirical Test Using Sem Analysis

Article

Full-text available

May 2023

Purpose: Working mothers are leading several industries, and they strive to balance work and family. Mothers at work face their biggest challenges and live with constant guilt when they leave their children. Due to this stressful lifestyle, working mothers struggle to regulate their emotional health and may exhaust themselves, breakdown, or burnout. They can manage this chaos with mindfulness. Working mothers need mindfulness to stay sane. Mindfulness protects against stress, depression, anxiety and other mental health issues and improves human functioning and quality of life as well. Theoretical framework: Working mothers need mindfulness to stay sane. Mindfulness protects against stress, depression, anxiety and other mental health issues and improves human functioning and quality of life as well. Thus, by analyzing the significance of mindfulness among working mothers, this study was proposed to examine the relationship between mindfulness practice (MP) and the quality of life (QOL) of working mothers. Design/methodology/approach: Data was collected from the sample size of 217 respondents who were working mothers in different sectors. Mindfulness and QOL are measured using standardized questionnaires like the Cognitive Affective Mindfulness Scale (CAMS-R) and the World Health Organization’s Quality of Life (WHOQOL) scale, respectively. Following data collection, structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis was employed using the partial least squares method. Findings: The findings reveal that there is a significant positive impact of Mindfulness practice on the Quality of work life of working mothers. Research, Practical & Social implications: The research results indicate that working mothers need to practice mindfulness in their routine lives to excel in parenting and to combat challenges in balancing work and life thus improving their QOL. Originality/value: There is meagre research conducted on mindfulness, thus this current study extends its originality on researching on impact of mindfulness practice on quality of life.

The effect of a 7‐day intensive Buddhist meditation on existential isolation, interpersonal isolation, and compassion among South Koreans

Article

May 2023

This study investigates the effects of an intensive Buddhist (Zen) meditation practice on reductions in existential isolation and increases in prosocial behavior. This study also examines whether the hypothesized reduction in existential isolation resulting from the intensive meditation practice predicts other‐focused compassion. Study 1 utilized a quasi‐experimental design to investigate the effects of meditation on existential isolation and other compassion by comparing healthy Koreans who completed a 7‐day intensive silent Zen meditation ( n = 35) with those who completed a 7‐day vacation ( n = 30). All participants completed measures twice: at baseline and after either their meditation retreat or their vacation. Study 2 used a longitudinal design to investigate whether Study 1 findings would replicate among 75 new TempleStay program participants. In Study 1, relative to participants in the vacation group, participants in the meditation group experienced reduced existential isolation and increased other‐focused compassion from Time 1 to Time 2. Reductions in existential isolation mediated the increases in other‐focused compassion. In Study 2, after a 1‐week intensive meditation training, participants experienced a reduction in existential isolation and an increased in other‐focused compassion; again, the reductions in existential isolation mediated increases in other‐focused compassion. Across two studies, we found evidence of reduced existential isolation and increased other‐focused compassion following an intensive Zen‐meditation practice. These results indicate that meditation practice may help people who suffer from existential isolation, as well as the people with whom they interact.

Compassion Training Alters Altruism and Neural Responses to Suffering

Article

Full-text available

May 2013
PSYCHOL SCI

Compassion is a key motivator of altruistic behavior, but little is known about individuals' capacity to cultivate compassion through training. We examined whether compassion may be systematically trained by testing whether (a) short-term compassion training increases altruistic behavior and (b) individual differences in altruism are associated with training-induced changes in neural responses to suffering. In healthy adults, we found that compassion training increased altruistic redistribution of funds to a victim encountered outside of the training context. Furthermore, increased altruistic behavior after compassion training was associated with altered activation in brain regions implicated in social cognition and emotion regulation, including the inferior parietal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and in DLPFC connectivity with the nucleus accumbens. These results suggest that compassion can be cultivated with training and that greater altruistic behavior may emerge from increased engagement of neural systems implicated in understanding the suffering of other people, executive and emotional control, and reward processing.

How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2011

Cultivation of mindfulness, the nonjudgmental awareness of experiences in the present moment, produces beneficial effects on well-being and ameliorates psychiatric and stress-related symptoms. Mindfulness meditation has therefore increasingly been incorporated into psychotherapeutic interventions. Although the number of publications in the field has sharply increased over the last two decades, there is a paucity of theoretical reviews that integrate the existing literature into a comprehensive theoretical framework. In this article, we explore several components through which mindfulness meditation exerts its effects: (a) attention regulation, (b) body awareness, (c) emotion regulation (including reappraisal and exposure, extinction, and reconsolidation), and (d) change in perspective on the self. Recent empirical research, including practitioners' self-reports and experimental data, provides evidence supporting these mechanisms. Functional and structural neuroimaging studies have begun to explore the neuroscientific processes underlying these components. Evidence suggests that mindfulness practice is associated with neuroplastic changes in the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, temporo-parietal junction, fronto-limbic network, and default mode network structures. The authors suggest that the mechanisms described here work synergistically, establishing a process of enhanced self-regulation. Differentiating between these components seems useful to guide future basic research and to specifically target areas of development in the treatment of psychological disorders. © Association for Psychological Science 2011.

Frontal Electroencephalographic Asymmetry Associated With Positive Emotion Is Produced by Very Brief Meditation Training

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2011
PSYCHOL SCI

Short-Term Compassion Training Increases Prosocial Behavior in a Newly Developed Prosocial Game

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2011
PLOS ONE

Compassion has been suggested to be a strong motivator for prosocial behavior. While research has demonstrated that compassion training has positive effects on mood and health, we do not know whether it also leads to increases in prosocial behavior. We addressed this question in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we introduce a new prosocial game, the Zurich Prosocial Game (ZPG), which allows for repeated, ecologically valid assessment of prosocial behavior and is sensitive to the influence of reciprocity, helping cost, and distress cues on helping behavior. Experiment 2 shows that helping behavior in the ZPG increased in participants who had received short-term compassion training, but not in participants who had received short-term memory training. Interindividual differences in practice duration were specifically related to changes in the amount of helping under no-reciprocity conditions. Our results provide first evidence for the positive impact of short-term compassion training on prosocial behavior towards strangers in a training-unrelated task.

Mindfulness Practice Leads to Increases in Regional Brain Gray Matter Density

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2010
PSYCHIAT RES

Therapeutic interventions that incorporate training in mindfulness meditation have become increasingly popular, but to date little is known about neural mechanisms associated with these interventions. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), one of the most widely used mindfulness training programs, has been reported to produce positive effects on psychological well-being and to ameliorate symptoms of a number of disorders. Here, we report a controlled longitudinal study to investigate pre-post changes in brain gray matter concentration attributable to participation in an MBSR program. Anatomical magnetic resonance (MR) images from 16 healthy, meditation-naïve participants were obtained before and after they underwent the 8-week program. Changes in gray matter concentration were investigated using voxel-based morphometry, and compared with a waiting list control group of 17 individuals. Analyses in a priori regions of interest confirmed increases in gray matter concentration within the left hippocampus. Whole brain analyses identified increases in the posterior cingulate cortex, the temporo-parietal junction, and the cerebellum in the MBSR group compared with the controls. The results suggest that participation in MBSR is associated with changes in gray matter concentration in brain regions involved in learning and memory processes, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective taking.

Open Hearts Build Lives: Positive Emotions, Induced Through Loving-Kindness Meditation, Build Consequential Personal Resources

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2008

B. L. Fredrickson's (1998, 2001) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions asserts that people's daily experiences of positive emotions compound over time to build a variety of consequential personal resources. The authors tested this build hypothesis in a field experiment with working adults (n = 139), half of whom were randomly-assigned to begin a practice of loving-kindness meditation. Results showed that this meditation practice produced increases over time in daily experiences of positive emotions, which, in turn, produced increases in a wide range of personal resources (e.g., increased mindfulness, purpose in life, social support, decreased illness symptoms). In turn, these increments in personal resources predicted increased life satisfaction and reduced depressive symptoms. Discussion centers on how positive emotions are the mechanism of change for the type of mind-training practice studied here and how loving-kindness meditation is an intervention strategy that produces positive emotions in a way that outpaces the hedonic treadmill effect.

Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature

Book

Jan 2002

This book examines how Western behavioral science - which has generally focused on negative aspects of human nature - holds up to cross-cultural scrutiny, in particular the Tibetan Buddhist celebration of the human potential for altruism, empathy, and compassion. Resulting from a meeting between the Dalai Lama, leading Western scholars, and a group of Tibetan monks, this volume includes excerpts from these dialogues as well as engaging chapters exploring points of difference and overlap between the two perspectives.

Gender and helping behaviour: A meta-analytic review of the social psychology literature

Article

Jan 1986

Gender and Helping Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Social Psychological Literature

Article

Nov 1986

According to our social-role theory of gender and helping, the male gender role fosters helping that is heroic and chivalrous, whereas the female gender role fosters helping that is nurturant and caring. In social psychological studies, helping behavior has been examined in the context of short-term encounters with strangers. This focus has tended to exclude from the research literature those helping behaviors prescribed by the female gender role, because they are displayed primarily in long-term, close relationships. In contrast, the helping behaviors prescribed by the male gender role have been generously represented in research findings because they are displayed in relationships with strangers as well as in close relationships. Results from our meta-analytic review of sex differences in helping behavior indicate that in general men helped more than women and women received more help than men. Nevertheless, sex differences in helping were extremely inconsistent across studies and were successfully predicted by various attributes of the studies and the helping behaviors. These predictors were interpreted in terms of several aspects of our social-role theory of gender and helping.

Social Ties and Susceptibility to the Common Cold

Article

Jun 1997

Objective: To examine the hypothesis that diverse ties to friends, family, work, and community are associated with increased host resistance to infection. Design: After reporting the extent of participation in 12 types of social ties (eg, spouse, parent, friend, workmate, member of social group), subjects were given nasal drops containing 1 of 2 rhinoviruses and monitored for the development of a common cold. Setting: Quarantine. Participants: A total of 276 healthy volunteers, aged 18 to 55 years, neither seropositive for human immunodeficiency virus nor pregnant. Outcome measures: Colds (illness in the presence of a verified infection), mucus production, mucociliary clearance function, and amount of viral replication. Results: In response to both viruses, those with more types of social ties were less susceptible to common colds, produced less mucus, were more effective in ciliary clearance of their nasal passages, and shed less virus. These relationships were unaltered by statistical controls for prechallenge virus-specific antibody, virus type, age, sex, season, body mass index, education, and race. Susceptibility to colds decreased in a dose-response manner with increased diversity of the social network. There was an adjusted relative risk of 4.2 comparing persons with fewest (1 to 3) to those with most (6 or more) types of social ties. Although smoking, poor sleep quality, alcohol abstinence, low dietary intake of vitamin C, elevated catecholamine levels, and being introverted were all associated with greater susceptibility to colds, they could only partially account for the relation between social network diversity and incidence of colds. Conclusions: More diverse social networks were associated with greater resistance to upper respiratory illness.

Meditation Increases Compassionate Response to Suffering

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